AFM Local 802 Calls Out Met for Outsourcing of NYE Gala and is Featured on CBSNews

AFM Local 802 is responding to the Metropolitan Opera's decision to hire non-Met musicians to perform under the banner of the Metropolitan Opera at the Opera's New Year's Eve gala. This is the fourth fundraising event where Met management is unethically outsourcing its musicians while, at the same time, attempting to use the pandemic as an opportunity to gut the regular Met musicians’ contract through destructive bargaining.

"The deepest offense any artistic institution can make is the choice to attack its own artists," said Local 802 President Adam Krauthamer. "Let’s be clear: hiring non-Met musicians under the banner of the Metropolitan Opera and outsourcing the orchestra's work is an attack on the Met as an artistic institution and an insult to the very artists who work there. The Met is still the only major American orchestra that has furloughed and not paid its musicians or given them any kind of substantial financial aid or lifeline during the pandemic. This is the kind of negligent leadership that leads to the self destruction of the Met’s artistic credibility, and -- on a larger scale -- to a Great Cultural Depression." Read more here, and read the Met musicians' own statement here.

President Krauthamer also offered insights this week in a CBSNews video on the pandemic's effect on the performing arts. Watch it here!